Category: Game Mechanics

Flasks are probably the most undervalued thing in Path of Exile. Most people dismiss them as buffs of too little value requiring too much effort to use or “keep up” all the time. The truth of the matter is these are some of the most powerful items in Path of Exile. Each flask can have one prefix and one suffix unless they are unique flasks. You can also use Glassblower’s Baubles on flasks to increase their effectiveness. This will be the first of multiple articles discussing different types of flasks. Today I will be discussing prefixes and suffixes of a life flask.

Life Flask Prefixes and Suffixes

A life flask is, in my opinion, the biggest reason to still go life-based. Life Flasks are very powerful and give a huge defensive boost. They let you sustain blood magic, stay alive, and sometimes just clear a little faster by being more aggressive. In general, you don’t want to have 5 life flasks. You usually want to be using quicksilver and unique flasks to boost your damage and speed. I will be talking about some good mods to roll on life flasks.

Prefixes

There is a wide variety of prefix options for flasks but I will only be discussing two that stand out to me. Remember that this is all personal preference based on my experiences in Path of Exile.

Bubbling – 50% reduced Amount Recovered, 135% increased Recovery Speed, 50% of Recovery applied Instantly. This is what I would consider a panic flask. It doesn’t recover all of your health at once which lets you tank damage even after you get your instant health. There are other, more specific, panic flasks that you can use but I would consider this the most powerful.

Surgeon’s – 20% chance to gain a Flask Charge when you deal a Critical Strike. Even after the massive nerf this flask received, it is still the most powerful flask prefix hands down for crit builds because it eases the micromanagement and skill level required to always keep flasks up.

Other Flasks – Besides these two options, there are other prefixes on flasks that in essence, let you get healed more. From here, its up to you to decide which other prefixes you want to use. Keep in mind, I do not suggest more than two or three life flasks on any given build. If you are a crit build. you may want to consider only using Surgeon’s.

Suffixes

All suffixes on flasks are fairly powerful and there are a lot of options to pick from. You usually pick suffixes based on your build so I will be discussing a large variety of them here.

Iron Skin – (60 to 100)% increased Armour during Flask effect. Generally I would hesitate to suggest this flask because if you’re an armor-based build, you probably use Granite Flasks which can also have this mod on them. This is always something to consider though.

Reflexes – (60 to 100)% increased Evasion Rating during Flask effect. For the same reason as Armour, I would not suggest this flask as you can use this mod on Jade Flasks.

Gluttony – 0.4% of Physical Attack Damage Leeched as Life during Flask effect. This is a useful flask if you cannot find physical leech anywhere else.

Staunching – Immunity to Bleeding during Flask effect, Removes Bleeding on use. This is probably the best flask to use because it removes bleed and mkaes you immune. This is a very dangerous mechanic in the game many challenging bosses such as Dominus have.

Grounding –Immunity to Shock during Flask effect, Removes Shock on use. This is very powerful as are the other elemental flasks. They remove status effects from your character.

The Guardian of the Minotaur is one of the four Guardians of the Void. He must be defeated to obtain the fragments to fight the Shaper. He is located in the T16 Maze of the Minotaur map.

The Guardian of the Minotaur is a slow-attacking, tanky boss made to resemble the melee aspect in Path of Exile. The bossfight is fought in a donut-shaped chamber with electrical barriers that deal damage when crossed. He also summons stone golems to help him with the fight. These can be used for flask charges.

Attacks

Default Attack – The Guardian of the Minotaur has a default attack that does medium-high damage. This attack is inaccurate and easy to evade manually, and with in-game mechanics.this attack will do around 2000-4000 mitigated damage on the standard energy shield endgame character. This number is probably lower for an armor character.

Cleave Attack– This attack does more damage than the normal default attack. It is swung in an arc with a relatively small area of effect. This attack is faster than the default attack but still can be predicted. Finally, it does 3000-5000 mitigated damage to the standard energy shield character.

Voll Slam – This attack is called Voll Slam because it is not unlike the slam Voll executes. This attack does the most damage out of any of his attacks. It does 4000-6000 mitigated damage to the standard energy shield character. The slam is easy to predict due to him raising his club in preparation for the attack.

Burrow – The Guardian of the Minotaur can burrow into the ground and pop up at another location. I have not dared to test the damage of his burrow but I suspect it will be relatively high.

Strategy

As the Guardian of the Minotaur is a slow-moving boss, a ranged character is preferable. You want to kite him around and predict his attacks to avoid not getting hit. Block, Evasion, and Dodge will be beneficial in this fight covering up your mistakes. Keep running around and use the stone golems he summons for flask charges. Do not get close to him. Try to not come in contact with the lightning barrier unless necessary.

Hello guys. Today I will be talking about a very confusing subject for many. Path of Exile has two main types of damage modifiers that each affect damage in a different way.

Additive Modifier Mechanics

Additive damage modifiers are known in-game as “reduced” and “increased” damage. The best way to think about additive damage modifiers is to picture them as a layer. They are the top “layer” of multipliers onto your base spell and weapon damage because they are the first to be multiplied by base spell and weapon damage. Also, all other damage modifiers are applied afterwards. The only exception to this rule are the local damage modifiers found on weapons. These additive modifiers are the easiest to stack because they are widespread in skill gems, items, and the Path of Exile passive tree. This is because each 1% of an additive modifier affects your damage the least due to being stacked first.

Multiplicative Modifier Mechanics

Multiplicative damage modifiers are known in-game as “less” and “more” damage. This is a highly coveted damage multiplier because it is added after all other damage multipliers. This means, per 1%, it has the greatest impact on your total damage because it is multiplied last.

Examples

Build 1: Base 100 damage. 100% increased damage. 0% more damage.

[(100 x 2.00) x 1] = 200 damage

Build 2: Base 100 damage. 70% increased damage. 30% more damage.

[(100 x 1.70) x 1.3] = 221 damage

Build 3: Base 100 damage. 50% increased damage. 50% more damage.

[(100 x 1.5) x 1.5] = 225 damage

As you can see, the more “more” damage you get, the higher your damage becomes. If you get more “more” damage than “increased” damage you will have less damage overall but that never occurs in Path of Exile. The reason for this being that “increased” damage is much easier to acquire.

Blasphemy is an intelligence-based skill gem that when linked to curses, turns them into auras with 35% mana reservation.

Mechanics

I consider the mechanics of Blasphemy to be very confusing because when it first came out, I made mistakes in using it myself. Blasphemy needs to be linked to the curses you want to use as auras. If linked to multiple curses,, +1 curse is needed or one of the two “Blasphemed” curses will be applied onto a target. Additionally, when linked to multiple curses, each individual curse will reserve 35% of your mana. Blasphemy works when linked with Enlighten and also works with Reduced Mana Reservation passives.

Useful Curses

Blasphemy is a very powerful mechanic that has completely revolutionized auras in Path of Exile. Most curses are still very powerful even though they were nerfed in 2.4. You can read more about the nerf here. I will only be listing curses that are widely used on Blasphemy. You can find the full list of curses here.

Assassin’s Mark

This is generally not a curse you want to be Blaspheming unless you really need the Critical Strike Chance and Power Charges. Vulnerability provides more damage for physical builds and elemental curses provide more damage for elemental builds. In some COC builds it can come in handy such as Cospri’s Malice Discharge.

Warlord’s Mark

This curse is very powerful and use of it is widespread. The curse effectiveness nerfs in 2.4 did affect it quite a bit but it is still one of the most powerful curses today. Most builds have enough damage to sustain leech even on bosses. This is used because it allows people to run a damage support gem on their attacks instead of Life Leech.

Temporal Chains

This is one of the most powerful curses in terms of defenses. High end boss-farming builds usually have enough damage and Temporal Chains is the extra defense they need. Additionally, Temporal Chains makes Curse Effects on Enemies expire 40% slower. Assume you are playing a Blade Vortex build with 150% increased skill duration (increased duration support gem and some passives). You poison then applies for 5 seconds. With Temporal Chains, which acts like a more multiplier, your poison applies for 7 seconds. That is almost a 30% more damage increase with poison. That is huge and when poison stacks hit double digits, that means millions of damage.

Elemental Weakness/Other Elemental Curses

Elemental Weakness is the BIS damage curse for elemental builds. One exception is if you’re going Inquisitor because you already ignore critical strikes. You want to be using Elemental Weakness if you do multiple types of elemental damage or if you are playing in a party where people have multiple types of elemental damage. If playing solo-only with one type of elemental damage one of the element-specific curses are slightly better because they remove more resistances and add chance for elemental status effects.

Enfeeble

This is another very useful defensive curse. It drastically reduces the damage you take from enemies. Once again, most high-end builds need defenses so this is an option. Usually Temporal Chains is a better option because it provides more utility but if you have the ability to run both curses, it is a very good combo. My low-life blade vortex character does this sometimes.

Vulnerability

I consider this hands down to be the best physical damage curse for a variety of reasons. The first and most important reason is that this curse acts as a “more damage” multiplier. It says increased damage applied to enemies on the skill gem. Applied to enemies makes all the difference because that adds a whole another layer of damage stacking, like a more multiplier. Additionally, it applies 33% more damage with damage over time affects. This is BIS for all poison physical damage builds and very good for physical damage builds in general.

The Cartographer’s Sextant is a currency item that can be used to add a mod to a map.

There are three tiers of Cartographer’s Sextants. The Apprentice Cartographer’s Sextant can be used on maps tier 1-5. The Journeyman Cartographer’s Sextant can be used on maps tier 1-10. The Master Cartographer’s Sextant can be used on maps tier 1-15. Cartographer’s Sextants are the colors of the maps they represent. This means they are white, gold, and red respectively.

Mechanics

The Cartographers Sextants are very useful because they apply mods in a radius, not unlike jewels. This means you can stack a lot of mods onto maps you prefer. The only downside Sextants have is that after five uses of any map affected by the modifier, the Sextant with that modifier is consumed. Luckily, unlike Shaper’s Orbs, sextants have unlimited drops. Red tier sextants are still 4 chaos and it is controversial if they are worth using. If you get a mod such as pack size, Sextants could be worth it, but reflect or Blood Magic could be devastating. Read more about Sextants here.

This is one of the most common questions people ask me in Path of Exile. How much Life do I need? The answer is that it varies. I will be breaking down different builds and how much life they each should have. I will assume that you are starting in a completely new league and do not have GG gear yet.

Melee

Generally, I try to have 3500-4000 life when starting dried lake farming. 3000 life is cutting it and will take some extra micromanagement to stay alive with. Melee builds will always be in the front lines taking damage continuously. With this life estimate, I am assuming you have some sort of defensive mechanic such as Life Leech. If you do not, you strictly need to have at-least 400 life. You should always be farming Dried Lake till level 70+. Maps are much more challenging and Dried Lake provides more experience than maps do. When starting maps with a Melee Build I would have 4000-5000 life minimum. Once you hit 5000 you are relatively safe because at that point, you usually have some endgame defensive mechanics like Lightning Coil, Block, or Armor.

Ranged

I always like to say Ranged has the most powerful defensive mechanic in the game. It lets you deal damage for afar lessening the chances of getting hit yourself. This is why I would say to start farming dried lake at around 3000-3500 life. I personally have around 2500 life when I start but I do micromanage a little. When starting maps you should have around 3500-4000 life. More is always better but at that point, damage may be a better investment.

I hope this article helps you. “How much life do I need” is such a common question that I feel this information needs to be put out somewhere.

Today I will be discussing armor, the first of four forms of mitigation I plan to post about. Each of these mitigations will have their own pro’s and con’s. Armor is used usually with life-based characters because armor and life nodes can usually be found close together. It can also be used with block to make full use of shields which many armor builds use.

Armor is very forgiving to use. It works very well versus small hits but its effectiveness goes down as the damage of individual hits goes up.

Damage Reduction

Here is a list of damage mitigation effectiveness from the official Path of Exile Wiki.

To prevent one third of damage, you need armour 5 times the damage (e.g. 500 Armour for 100 damage)

To prevent half of damage, you need armour 10 times the damage (e.g. 1000 Armour for 100 damage)

To prevent two thirds of damage, you need armour 20 times the damage (e.g. 2000 Armour for 100 damage)

To prevent three quarters of damage, you need armour 30 times the damage (e.g. 3000 Armour for 100 damage)

To prevent 90% of damage, you need armour 90 times the damage (e.g. 9000 Armour for 100 damage)

Armour will never prevent more damage than its value divided by 10 (e.g. 1000 Armour will never prevent more than 100 damage)

How to Scale

The best builds use flasks to boost their armour and can reach up to 70,000 armour. Paired with endurance charges these builds can reach up to 90% estimated physical damage mitigation. When building around armour you generally want to be in the marauder part of the passive tree. Most of the armour and life nodes are located there. There are also many unique items that boost your armour and other aspects of your build. Some examples are Kaom’s Heart, The Brass Dome, and many others. You need to think of your specific build and what pertains to you. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and come up with new ideas. The best builds are always outside the box. Voltaxic Poison Spark, Assassin Tornado Shot, Pathfinder Blade Vortex… the list goes on and on.

When new players start playing Path of Exile, they usually play life based. When they finally see energy shield builds, they are entranced by it. Everyone considers energy shield overpowered but not many people recognize the downsides. Everyone wants to use it because all the wealthy players do. Energy Shield had a higher power ceiling and a lower floor. This is because your gear singlehandedly decides how much EHP you have. Below I have a short list of benefits of using energy shield.

Positives

Can reach amounts of energy shield impossible to reach as life.

Nodes can be picked up in the Witch/Shadow area of the tree, where life nodes are rare.

In essence, energy shield is much harder to play. You will never understand this fully until you play an energy shield build and it would be fruitless for me to try to explain further. If you have any questions about ES or life comment here and I will get back to you in a timely manner.